


Leaving and Staying

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Smut, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 11:46:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3380345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two people the Doctor left behind find each other and fall in love. But it's never just that simple, not for these two.</p>
<p>Written for the Golden Oldies Porn Battle; the original prompt was posted in Porn Battle V. The prompt is Susan Foreman/Jack Harkness, left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leaving and Staying

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Best Beloved for posting these at the battle site.
> 
> There are some brief mentions of violence, blood, and death (but mostly of Jack) if that bothers you.

Jack gasps back to life, his ruined tissues knotting back together after the Dalek shot him. On the plus side, he is alive, and he can still feel the ghosts of warm kisses goodbye on his lips. As soon as he can move his legs again, he sets off in search of the Doctor and Rose.

They aren't where he left them. In point of fact, they aren't anywhere. He's burying the lede: no-one is anywhere. He wouldn't expect the Daleks to leave survivors, but he sort of reckoned they'd leave, you know, _Daleks_. But there isn't even wreckage, either aboard the station or floating out in space from any of the windows he can find.

It's one of the windows that does him in, as it happens. Must have taken a few hits during the gunfight, he surmises as he is sucked out into the void. He has just enough time to mash the buttons on his vortex manipulator before he blacks out.

He wakes up several moments later, sucking blessed air into his lungs to replace the burning taste of vacuum. He realizes that he really shouldn't be alive. And yet, here he is. That's twice, he thinks. Not that he plans on testing it again. Earth, he decides, looking around. London, in fact. 23rd century or so, at a guess. Perfect: the Doctor did seem to favor this city. He grins, brushes himself off, and tries to get his bearings. “Alright, Doctor,” he mutters, where are you?”

***

“I hear you're looking for the Doctor,” Susan says calmly, taking the barstool next to his and introducing herself. She's heard the rumors—Captain Harkness has been making the rounds in more ways than one—and it suits her purpose to let him think that that's the only reason she's come to him. As if she can't feel the wrongness within him, the stillness of time about his soul where there should be the flow of the hourglass.

“I am,” he replies. “Jack Harkness.”

"Stop it,” she says softly but firmly. When she was a girl, she might have blushed at the innuendo laced into that name. But she's had many years to grow, even if there isn't any gray in her short, dark hair.

“Are you a friend of his?” he asks. “I used to travel with him, and I'm trying to find him, but I might stick around, given present company. ” She glares at him, and he coughs awkwardly. “I sort of got left behind; they thought I was dead.” He shrugs. “To be fair, I think I was.” She raises an impressed eyebrow. Something to do with the strangeness about him? She's never seen a living fixed point in time before, so she isn't sure how to recognize one—she hadn't gone on to more advanced studies after becoming a Time Lady, opting for a more practical curriculum with her grandfather.

“I used to travel with him, too,” she says, surprising herself. Something about Jack makes her want to open up to him: his magnetism, the anomaly within him, or just the camaraderie of two time-travelers crossing paths, she doesn't know. She smiles sadly. “He knew I was alive, though.”

“I'm sorry,” he says, hand reaching out to touch hers where it rests on the bar. She doesn't draw away.

“Don't be,” she says abruptly. “I was weaker then—I'd almost be ashamed when I think back if I hadn't had such fun and met such wonderful people.” Well, she thinks, being too sickly to try to flee her own execution: now that was pretty shameful. “I don't think I would have grown stronger if I hadn't left.”

“I thought I was strong before I met him,” Jack whispers. “It wasn't until I started traveling with him that I realized the coward that I was. I think we need people to know who we truly are, family that we claw to us.”

“I haven't had anyone in so long,” Susan blurts out, then immediately realizes how it must sound. The smirk on Jack's face tells her he is thinking the exact same thing before it quickly fades and he apologizes. “No, it was my fault,” she tells him. “I feel like a silly little girl all over again.”

“You don't look silly to me,” he says, and on an impulse, she kisses him.

***

They trade life stories, anecdotes about their travels with the Doctor, and recipes for grilled hrin fowl. “I'm a widow,” she tells him one day, after dinner in her flat.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

“Oh, no,” she replies. “I just meant,” she bites her lip, “some men wouldn't want to...” she trails off, and he fills the silence with his smiling lips. It all cascades from there, and soon their clothes are strewn over the small apartment; if Susan recognizes his vortex manipulator, she doesn't say anything about it. He doesn't raise the issue, not least because of the way her head is bobbing up and down between his legs, her cool tongue caressing his shaft. He moans and pushes her elvish frame back onto the bed. “You're gorgeous,” he tells her, and he means it, even more than he usually does, just before he returns the favor, and she flushes down to her small breasts.

“Jack,” she breathes, and reaches into her nightstand. The condom hasn't changed that much in human history (though you can get one which resembles a Silurian ovipositor, if that's your kink, Jack happens to know) and he slides it on with practiced ease. “Please?” He doesn't make her ask twice, and fills her delightfully. “Jack, Jack, Jack,” she murmurs as she holds him close, pressing each thrust deeper into her, hands cool on the taut muscles of his hips. She can't even hear what Jack is saying, be it her name or dreadful poetry, can't hear anything as she comes.

***

Years pass and they are strolling through the middle of London: Susan is listing places where she and Barbara dodged Daleks; Jack is pointing out buildings that got damaged in the Blitz. That's when Jack hears it.

“Doctor!” he cries. “I knew you'd...” he trails off as the doors don't open. Susan is close behind him. He fishes into the right pocket at once, pulling out his old TARDIS key.

“Do you think he's hurt?” Susan asks anxiously.

“I hope not,” Jack whispers, and pushes open the door. Same bigger-on-the-inside interior, now a mix of lime enamel and Art Deco design. “It's empty,” he wonders.

“Grandfather?” Susan calls.

A flat female voice responds. “Voiceprint recognized; Emergency Program Three, activating.”

The mechanical voice fades, and a hologram of a wizened black man appears. “Hello, Susan,” he begins. “If you are hearing this, it is because I am a foolish old man, too afraid to face you. I have reached the end of my regenerations; my luck has run out. And so I bequeath to you my TARDIS, my fondest legacy. Use her wisely and well, my dear girl, she is very old now. I have programmed her to lock in on your genetic signature once I am no more. Good luck: go with my love and the strength of our convictions.” The hologram flickers, and vanishes.

Tears in her eyes, Susan turns to Jack, burying herself in his greatcoat. She allows herself to cry, then forms the words: “He's gone, then. I didn't even get to say a proper goodbye...”

Jack is as stunned as she is—something about the Doctor had felt like forever. “I'm sorry,” he manages, and it is enough for a few moments.

***

“Were you going to leave without me?” Susan says, after some time has passed—if such a phrase can be said inside of a time machine. “I saw the way you ran towards the TARDIS—it was like you didn't have a care in the world.”

By way of reply, Jack raises his wrist. “Vortex manipulator. Not pleasant, but effective.” He sucks in a hard breath. “If I'd really wanted to leave you, I could have done it at any time.” He gestures toward the console, and they both step closer, away from the door which has closed behind them without either of them touching it. “Shall we?”

“Captain Harkness, I do believe we shall,” Susan replies, pixie-like grin on her face as she works the controls, slamming the dematerialization lever home.

***

They travel the universe, because when you have a little blue box that can take you anywhere in time and space, is there any other option? (She doesn't take the Doctor's name for her own. In part, it feels like sacrilege; in part, she doesn't want to bring him into their bed. She knows she'll always be second-best, for all that Jack loves her, and she doesn't need to be reminded of that fact more often than necessary.) It almost goes without saying that they get into trouble, whether it's the notoriety of the police box, the TARDIS taking them where they need to go, or just Jack flirting with everything on two (or more, or fewer) legs. And so it is on Nyranian Five that things blow up around them, literally, when a war breaks out.

Jack dives for Susan, pushing her to the ground as bullets and shrapnel fly. “Jack, please,” she whispers as his eyes close. “I can't lose you yet.”

“Don't worry about me,” he whispers, blood dripping from his mouth. He feathers a kiss to the tip of her nose—he always did like it—just before the world goes black.

She is still mid-scream when he jolts back to life. Her mouth continues to hang open, but no sound pours forth. “Jack,” she says finally, “once we sort this out, we are going to fuck. And then we are going to talk.”

He swallows. “Okay,” he manages, rolling off of her.

***

It takes them the rest of the day and Jack dies three more times (only once intentionally), but they finally work out a cease-fire that makes everyone happy. True to her promise, Susan tears at his clothes the instant they get back to the TARDIS. They are halfway to tatters anyway, so it doesn't take her much work to get him naked to his boots with a mess of shreds around them. He peels off her jacket and hikes up her dress, not bothering to do more than push the gusset of her panties aside as he takes her against a wall. Her hands play over the muscles of his chest, his skin amazingly unscarred despite the number of perforations he's suffered. She moans wordlessly, low and guttural, and wraps her arms around his neck, the thrum of the TARDIS pulsing through her core to match his steady thrusts. The Time Lady, the time machine, and the fixed point, she thinks, laughing inside as they come.

“So,” Jack begins reluctantly. “Talking.”

“Yes,” she says, moving deeper into the TARDIS, the comforting labyrinth already calming the race of her hearts. “You first,” she says, trying to remember where she left the bathroom—she needs to get the blood and smoke out of her hair.

“I can't die,” Jack says bluntly. “I don't know how it happened, or why.” He tells her about Rose and the Doctor, how he was holding off the Daleks so that the Doctor could figure out how to stop them, how he died, and then he was alive. “I didn't tell you,” he says, following her unselfconsciously, “because I wasn't sure it was even a thing—as far as I knew, it had happened once, maybe twice.” He shudders as they reach the bathroom and Susan strips off efficiently. Her body, once so familiar, now looked alien to him, from the set of her shoulders to the splay of her feet. He tries not to stare as she steps into the spray, leaving the stall open behind her. “I could have left,” he reminds her. They don't have to be having this conversation. “Could have run, the way I've done so many times before.”

“The way you will again,” she says, soft but fierce. She turns and faces him, the hot water streaming down and masking her tears. She raises a finger to his lips. “I can see the swirls of time, Jack Harkness, and we don't last forever, and it's not because I leave you.” She smiles sadly. “I never did know when it was time to leave.”

“I'm not running anytime soon,” he vows. “I love you.”

“You idiot,” she laughs, “don't you think I know that? Now come in—I'm freezing!” His grin stretches across his face as he drinks in the splendid body he knows so well, and he just remembers to kick off his boots before he joins her in the shower. Time stands still around them as the past drains away, and for this moment, they embrace, just a man and woman in love.

**Author's Note:**

> For Jack, this is immediately after Parting of the Ways and slightly AU in that he takes a bit of a detour before winding up in the 19th century. He hasn't quite become the person we see in Torchwood yet: still a little scared, not as cynical, still very much figuring out who he is.
> 
> Susan, on the other hand, has had a while from after Dalek Invasion of Earth to grow into herself. She's a little older, a little wiser, and a little more experienced than the screamer we saw in black and white, though there's still a bit of that girlishness to her.


End file.
